The book

First Contact

Why every company in your category sounds the same, and the one position none of them took. Fourteen chapters, about an hour, free.

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36 pages. No email, no form, no gate. It downloads.

What's in it

Part oneWhat every company says. The three positions. Why two of them are free and the third isn't. Who is actually reading — and why they behave like last year's consumer.
Part twoWhy this happens to good teams. Consensus as the mechanism. The research that gets cut because it has no deadline. Averaging four buyers instead of finding the thread between them.
Part threeHow far it travels. The Upstream Test, the Safety Question, the Levels, the Assertion Band.
Part fourWhat to do about it. Taking the open position without a rebrand. Different rather than unique. The kill list. The first date.

It closes with a scorecard you can print and run against your own category — one page per company, six competitors, and you have a picture of where everyone is standing.

What it isn't

It isn't a writing book. There is nothing in it about headlines, verbs, or how to phrase anything. Every chapter is a decision you make and hand to somebody else.

That's deliberate. Advice about how to write implies that writing is the thing you were missing, and it almost never is. Your team can write. What they're usually missing is a decision that survived the meeting.

A sample, so you know what you're getting

Every generic sentence you've ever read was produced by intelligent people acting reasonably.

Someone writes a sharp line. It says something specific and slightly risky. Then it goes around the building.

Sales says it excludes a segment they're actively selling into. That's true. Legal says it's a claim you'd have to substantiate. Also true. The head of the second business unit points out that it describes the first business unit's customers and not theirs, and they'd like to be represented. Fair. Product notes that the roadmap makes that language inaccurate by Q3. Correct.

Each of those objections is legitimate. Each one removes one specific edge. Nobody in the room ever argued for weak language — they argued for accuracy, for fairness across business units, for not overclaiming, for legal safety. Weak language is simply what those arguments produce when you add them together.

— Chapter four

Take it

Download the PDF

Forward it, print it, put it in a board pack, hand it to your agency. No permission needed.

If you'd rather skip the argument and just use the instrument, the model is on one page — or score your own homepage in three minutes.